Zululand Tour day 8 -Khambula

Today after waking to find the local wildlife playing outside our room , we headed off to Khambula .After the defeat at Hlobane ,Wood moved and strengthened his camp by moving his wagons into lager and then a using a large knoll that was fortified with earth works and trenches as his main fort ,off to one side was acattle krall .Wood also had some artillery which was placed between the lager ,fort and Krall .The Zulus were reluctant to attack after the lesson learnt at Rorkes Drift and Wood sent Redvers (pronounced Reevers ) Buller out with his cavalry to get the Zulus to prematurly attack which they did and the mounted troops only just made it back to the British Lines.As the battle raged the Zulus dug in and started to snipe at the British so Wood ordered agroupof the 90th to go out and clear away the snipers this went horribly wrong with the Officer in charge Major Hackett being blinded and another officer killed .The Zulus pressed home a number of attacks but eventually fell back and started to withdraw ,Bullers mounted troops were again sent out to harass the retiring Zulu army ,basically cutting down the tired Zulus and slaughtering the wounded warriors where they lay .The colonial force suffered 83 casualties and its estimated the Zulus lost around 3000 men .

Morning fun at Ithala waking to this lot outside our bedroom was amazing 

The memorial stone on the site of the fort

The area of the fort 

some of the entrenchments and earth walls can still be seen 

looking from the fort down towards the main Zulu attack ,they reached to where our vehicle is parked 

looking up at the knoll from the zulu lines

The Colnial Cemetery with the knoll in the background 

lots of items can still be found on the battlefield ,Martiny Henry shell cases ,a musket ball and shrapnel